Firearms, or guns, such as pistols, handguns and rifles are designed to fire ammunition, usually cartridges, to propel a projectile, such as bullet or buckshot, or the like towards a target. Generally, a firearms cartridge comprises a metallic casing which packages primer, gunpowder, and a bullet (or other projectile(s)), into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head (centerfire ammunition) or at its rim (rimfire ammunition).
In order to carry and feed multiple cartridges to the firing chamber, many firearms have “magazines” which hold a number of cartridges and feed the cartridges to the firing chamber. The magazine functions by moving the cartridges stored in the magazine into a position where they may be loaded into the firing chamber by the action of the firearm. Examples of magazines including drum-type ammunition for automatic machine guns, “banana”-type clips for automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons, and magazine clips for many types of pistols and rifles. Typically, the cartridges are loaded into the magazine by inserting them through a feeder on the magazine. For instance, with a conventional stacking magazine, the cartridges are pushed into the cartridge laterally (on their side), into the magazine against the force of a spring-loaded follower which pushes the cartridges through the feeder and into the firing chamber.
Ammunition cartridges may be fixed on the firearm, or removable (detachable) from the firearm. A removable magazine allows the firearm to be reloaded by simply removing a spent magazine and installing a loaded magazine. This procedure can significantly increase the speed with which a firearm can be reloaded.
Ammunition magazines have been developed in a variety of shapes and sizes to accommodate certain purposes. For instance, some magazines are designed into the handles of the firearms, some extend outward from the body of the firearm, and some are aligned with the body of the firearm. Magazines also come in many different capacities (the number of cartridges they can hold). The capacity of a magazine is limited by factors such as size, weight, handling and overall dimensions. Thus, it is advantageous for a magazine to be compact and light, but still have a large capacity.
A number of designs directed at providing a compact, ergonomic, high capacity magazine have been previously described. For example, a number of cylindrical magazines having helically arranged cartridges are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,800, issued Aug. 30, 1988, to Miller et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,572, issued Aug. 14, 1990, to Miller et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,601,496, issued Aug. 5, 2003, to Kalashnikov et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,137, issued Jun. 30, 1987, to Stockton et al. In all of the magazines described in these references, the cartridges are aligned parallel to the axis of the cylinder, and the magazines are designed to be attached to the firearms with the longitudinal axes of the magazines aligned parallel to the barrel of the firearm. This is necessary because this orientation aligns the cartridges with the firing chamber of the firearm as the cartridges are inserted in to the firing chamber. Indeed, one of the goals of this type of design was to provide a cartridge in which the longitudinal axis is parallel to the barrel of the firearm to avoid having a magazine extending perpendicular to the barrel, as such a configuration was described to be prohibitively cumbersome.
However, these previous designs are relatively complex, making them potentially difficult to manufacture and unreliable. Moreover, there are many firearms where it is desirable to have the magazine extend perpendicular from the barrel of the gun, and these prior designs cannot be so oriented because such orientation would align the cartridges perpendicular to the firing chamber. For example, in the case where the magazine is inserted into, or is used as, a handle or hand grip for the firearm, it may be desirable for the magazine to extend outward from the barrel, not parallel to the barrel. Accordingly, there is a need for an ammunition magazine and firearm which overcomes the deficiencies of previous devices.